Looming Food Crisis Threatens Up To 2 Million Somalis, UN Agency Warns
Up to 2 million people in Southern Somalia are likely to be in a ‘humanitarian emergency’ or ‘acute food and livelihood
crisis’ for at least the next six months due to failed rains, double the number previously projected, according to the
latest report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“Somalia is experiencing a dangerous confluence of factors that almost certainly will lead to rapidly plummeting
humanitarian conditions throughout Southern regions,” FAO said, urging immediate food aid for the Horn of Africa country
where 14 years of protracted civil war and persistent fragmented conflicts have eroded livelihoods.
“Failed rains throughout Southern Somalia will lead to the lowest Deyr harvest in over 10 years. Rangelands are in very
poor condition, with livestock dying and pastoralists struggling to find water and fodder,” it added, summarizing recent
data from the Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSAU), implemented by FAO and funded by the European Commission
and USAID.
“Our concern now is that the global donor community seizes this window of opportunity to prevent images of mass
starvation as we have seen in Niger and Sudan,” FSAU Chief Technical Advisor Nicholas Haan said.
The next rainy season is not expected to provide relief until June. This year’s previous cereal harvest in July was the
worst in a decade, with combined production probably around 25 per cent of the long term average and less food stocks
and money available to vulnerable groups to cope with further shocks.
Several areas have on-going resource-based conflicts, causing human displacement and death as well as disrupting markets
and animal migration patterns. As yet unresolved tensions within the Transitional Federal Government, combined with
reports of continued imports of military weapons, could lead to widespread civil conflict, which would further devastate
humanitarian conditions.
Relief groups have limited access to some areas most critically in need of aid. Further, the upsurge of piracy off the
Somali coast limits food supply lines for both commercial and humanitarian imports. Acute malnutrition is already
significantly above acceptable levels and the physiological capacity to resist further stress is limited.
The Deyr rainy season is equally bad in neighbouring areas of Ethiopia and Kenya, greatly restricting migratory options
and limiting social support mechanisms. Although the most severe Humanitarian Emergencies are expected in the south,
both the central and northern Somalia is also experiencing food and livelihood crises requiring aid.